Review: What We Do In The Shadows (2014)

“Yeah some of our clothes are from victims. You might bite someone and then, you think, ‘Oooh, those are some nice pants!’.”
– Viago

SYNOPSIS: Viago, Deacon, and Vladislav are vampires who are finding that modern life has them struggling with the mundane – like paying rent, keeping up with the chore wheel, trying to get into nightclubs, and overcoming flatmate conflicts. – via IMDB

I have been meaning to get to this for so long, and finally I got the opportunity. You know what? I had such a good time with this movie! It was hilarious. Wow. I cannot tell you how much fun my fiancé and I had watching this. We popped it in, had no real expectations, and promptly started laughing and it continued in that fashion for the next hour and a half.

The vampires we are introduced to, Vladislav, Viago, Petyr, and Deacon, are just mad. Arguing about dishes that haven’t been washed in years, all tiptoeing around Nosferatu lookalike Petyr, arguing as to what it means to be a vampire, the mundane lives they are living, this all came together well. The fact that this was shot in a mockumentary style, which is something that I was a little wary about because it is usually something that filmmakers try and fail dismally at. However, it was it he perfect medium to tell the story. Imagine these centuries-old vampires living together in a flat, from all sorts of avenues of life, and now together in New Zealand for their different reasons. New Zealand has been doing a really great job with the horror comedy genre recently, I have to say.

Anyway, Nick was a character that came in and I liked, but let’s face it, we all still liked Stu more for some absurd reason. The werewolves with their classic line on being “werewolves, not swearwolves” had me in stitches every single time they said it, and the interactions between the vampires and werewolves was highly entertaining. The play that was made on vampires today and what we know was done very well, and I found the movie to be really witty and balancing just enough cheese and lunacy in it to be wonderful.

What We Do In The Shadows is a comedy that is smarter than most will probably give it credit for, and is infintely quotable. In a day and age where vampires have been overdone and made to be superbly ridiculous, this is such a refreshing watch which I highly recommend.